Popular Topics

The Magazine

Let us take you on a journey of the world. Each issue of the Gear Patrol Magazine comes packed with adventures, guides and stories exclusive to the magazine. Stunningly designed, printed on high quality stock and ready for your coffee table. Subscribers received 15% off the GEAR PATROL STORE. Biannual. $35.

The Newsletter

Get GEAR PATROL in your inbox with the DISPATCH, including Today in Gear and all our new stories. Daily, 5pm. Free.

This Bottle of 50-Year-Old Japanese Whisky Sold for Nearly $300,000

Over the weekend, a single bottle of Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky sold for $2,337,000 HKD ($298,879 USD) to become the most expensive bottle of Japanese whisky ever sold at auction, reportedHypebeast. Carrying an age statement of 50 years, it belonged to a 2011 release made up of just 150 bottles — each signed by Suntory’s Master Blender Fukuyo Shinji. (For reference, the 12-year expression of the same whisky, now widely available in the U.S., starts at $64.)

While the figure seems astronomical, even absurd, this weekend was not the first time a single bottle of Japanese whisky has demanded six figures at an auction. In 2016, a similar 50-year-old Yamazaki fetched roughly $129,000. Both feel like bargains when compared to the most expensive whiskey ever sold, however. In 2014, a hand-blown decanter filled with The Macallan M sold for $628,205.

This definitive guide of the best bourbons of 2018 explores everything you need to know about America’s favorite brown spirit, including important terminology, the politics of pricing and, of course, a list of the best bottles you can actually find at your local liquor store. Read the Story